


Compass

by Sekiei



Series: Life's crumbs [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3492716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sekiei/pseuds/Sekiei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One evening / night of their life on the road on the way to Abel. Or Eugene realising that although they both want to live, they obviously want more than that and it might not be such a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compass

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so a few months back I got into Zombies, Run!, fell in love with the whole thing and especially with the Radio Mode, usual story...  
> Of course, I ended up with 7566 headcanons about what happened to Jack and Eugene between the famous "come with me if you want to live" and arriving at Abel, and I started writing them down. Unfortunately, I had to give priority to other projects before I could go very far with it all, but I have a couple of fairly stand-alone snippets for anybody who think they'd enjoy them. 
> 
> If anything deviates from canon then it's either that I don't know about it (I'm only in the first half of season 2) or I forgot. I would love any comment / feedback, but please keep it spoiler free. Thank you! :)

Eugene can’t contain a groan of disgust when the door swings open revealing the inside of the third room. From the corner of his eye, he sees Jack tense, both hands clenched around the hilt of W.G. although Eugene is still blocking the doorway from view.

“Sorry. It’s okay, it’s clean,” Eugene says, swallowing the now familiar guilt of being behind a false alert.

After so many days on the road falling from grim to worse, there is only so much adrenaline their bodies are still able to muster. They learnt the hard way that wasting it is not a good idea. Unfounded causes for alarm rapidly take their toll, increasing exhaustion, dulling reflexes, slowing response time when finally faced with a real threat. He suspects the sudden malnutrition their metabolism is having to cope with is probably not helping either.

Eugene pushes the door open further, making a wide encompassing gesture towards the cramped bedroom. The garish colours hurt his eyes ; green and orange wallpaper, burgundy bed frame and comforter, dirty yellow armchairs, the result is nauseating.

“You know, I used to watch all those low budget indie movies from the UK back in my university days. I thought they were taking the piss with their interior sets. I mean it had to be a statement about generalised lack of taste or something. I genuinely didn’t believe anything quite as bad could exist in real life. Turns out I was wrong.”

Jack laughs.

“You’re such a snob.”  
“Hey! I resent that. You can’t tell me you actually appreciate the…” Eugene hesitates, unsure if the word can actually apply. “… decor.”  
“Nah. Still a snob.”  
“Am not.”  
“You’re a food journalist.”  
“That’s a legitimate profession.”  
“Reporting on pop-up restaurants.”  
“Which are an interesting concept.”  
“Let me give you a quote: ‘an unpretentious establishment blending aboriginal tastes and modern techniques into a truly epicurean cuisine’.”  
“Shut up.”

Jack sneer at him with a victorious first pump. Eugene should have known better than to let him read from the notebook pages he had used to lit a fire a few nights back.

“You would have liked it.”  
“What?”  
“That place, the one I was writing about? It was good, simple and clean dishes, but damn they knew how to cook.”  
“I’m sure I’d have. Believe it or not I can appreciate good food.”  
“Their wine selection wasn’t all that though,” Eugene adds with a badly suppressed grin.  
“Oh shut up.”

Jack pushes past him, stepping into the room. To Eugene’s relief, the light is started to dim outside rendering the colours less lurid.

“You know what your problem is?” Jack says.  
“No but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”  
“It’s a question of perspective. Come here.”

Jack gestures him in when he doesn’t immediately step across the threshold. He grabs for Eugene’s sleeve as soon as he’s within reach, pulls him near and taking hold of his shoulders turns him to face the rest of the room.

“Tell me what you see.”  
“Art Deco, the Zombie Years?”

The quip makes Jack full on giggles. Eugene files it as a victory.

“Right. And there’s your problem.”

Eugene makes a point of answering with an eye roll, but bites.

“Fine. How so?”

Jack sits down on the edge of the mattress counting every point he makes on his fingers.

“Here’s what I see. We’re in a B&B. This is a guest room. It’s empty, there are no personal effects laying around. The bed is made, with folded towels and a little bit of lavender on top of the comforter. This is a room that was ready for new guests before the world went to hell. And what it all means, Gene, is that tonight we can sleep in a bed, with a proper mattress and clean sheets and even a bloody duvet! So I’m sorry if you don’t approve of the colour scheme but it’s still the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.”  
“You do make a compelling argument.”  
“Come on, come and feel the sheets. I think they’re part silk,” Jack says, extending a hand. “I promise I’ll pretend not to notice if you cry.”  
“Idiot.”

But there no heat behind the word and Jack only smiles wider, his body language relaxed in a way Eugene had never witnessed before. There’s no ignoring how inviting he looks. His hand is still reaching out, offered, patiently waiting for Eugene to take it. Survival seems an abstract thought for the first time since they met and Eugene can’t help but smile back. He takes a step forward, fingers closing around Jack’s.  
Looking down, he watches how their hands naturally entwined. Relief chokes him at the sight, a dry sob at the back of his throat he forces himself to swallow down. The strength of his emotions stuns him. Riding from near death experience to near death experience, he hadn’t realised how much he needed this, needed some human contact with no practical purpose, contact that was not for physical support, or warmth, or to be forcefully shoved out of the way of a screeching corpse. The hold on his fingers is light and perfect, gentle. Eugene feels foolish yet it’s the most beautiful feeling he can remember.  
That’s when movement catches his eyes, under the bed right in between Jack’s trainers.

 

*

 

He sends Jack toppling over on the mattress, hard. For a half second, Eugene can hear him laugh, surprised yet amused by the shove. The Crawler launches towards him across the floor, wet raspy moans breaking into Jack’s happy spell.

“Fuck! Eugene!”

Eugene scrambles backwards but he’s lost time getting Jack out of the way. The zombie’s hand closes around his right ankle like a vice. He jerks against it. His steel pipe is against the wall by the door, a couple of mere meters away.  
Despite missing most of its body lower half, the Crawler holds fast and Eugene loses his balance. He manages to prevent his skull from hitting the floor, but the blow knocks the air out of his chest. The carpet offers no purchase under his fingertips. He futilely stretches an arm towards his weapon, well out of reach, legs kicking wildly at the corpse. A sudden blunt pain in his foot makes him cry out. He doesn’t need to look to know what has happened. The Crawler’s jaw locks down further, crushing pressure intensifying. Eugene reaches out on instinct, grabbing at the corpse’s skull, trying to pry it off. He gets a handful of hair and rotten skin for his trouble. Pain turns his vision into a red blur.

A grim crunch resounds in his skull. It takes a couple of seconds for his sight to clear. Jack is standing by the side of the zombie, W.G. in hands. For an instant, the Crawler stills as Jack raises his bat again. But before he can bring it down, the zombie rears up and whips around, throwing itself at Jack’s throat. Despite its crushed limbs, its whole body lifts above the floor with unbridled hunger. Jack moves fast, grabbing a pillow from the bed and shoving it into the corpse’s face, teeth biting at the goose down, feathers grotesquely clinging to decomposing flesh.  
Eugene clambers to his feet just as the zombie hurls itself at its new target again. Jack’s back hit the wall, the room too small to get enough space between him and the corpse to swing his bat.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Jack mutters like a mantra as he slides along the wallpaper and gets backed into a corner, eyes wild.

Eugene grabs the closest armchair and sets it down on the moving corpse, pushing his full weight through his knee on the seat. Two of the feet pierce the thorax and what’s left of the abdomen with a wet gurgle, nailing the body to the floor. The rancid stench it releases makes Eugene gag but he ignores it, bracing against the armchair. Jack uses the reprieve to bring W.G. down on the Crawler again. This time, the skull caves in, blood and brain matter spattered over the carpet. The zombie stops moving with a final strangled moan.

A second of eerie silence passes. Then, in a flash, the adrenaline drains out of Eugene. He stumbles and slides to the ground, arms circling his knees to keep himself upright. The pain is coming back and lances through his foot with a vengeance. His vision is still grey and swimming at the edges. There’s a soft thud as W.G. hits the floor and then Jack’s hands are on him, pushing the leg of his trousers up, not minding the blood and saliva marring the fabric.  
Eugene wants to tell him to be careful, that he shouldn’t do this with his bare hands, but words refuse to come out as his jaw clenches against the pain when Jack tugs at the shoelaces on his trainer. His fingers are stiff and clumsy, the knot only coming undone at the third try.  
Jack pulls the shoe off, throws it to the side. Eugene can’t bring himself to look down, so he stares at it instead. It’s glistening with red and black fluid all over. There’s a hole in the side filled with rubber fragments and tufts of cotton where the zombie bit down.  
Jack is taking his sock off, pushing the leg of his trousers further up, bunching it around the knee. He hears the soft whisper of the throw blanket he’s pulling from the bed to wipe the grim from his foot. Jack’s muttering under his breath, frantic, but the words don’t reach him. Eugene lets his head fall back, knocking it against the wooden arm of the chair still embedded in the corpse. He’s past beyond caring and scrunches his eyes shut instead. He feels numb.

He’s thought about it a lot, about what he’d do if he was bitten. He suspects anybody who’s still alive probably has. There are so many options, yet so few appealing ones. It would be nice to find a gun, but this is Britain ; guns just aren’t laying around for the picking. For a while, he’d planned on finding a chemist or an hospital, to get a few syringes of insulin or morphine, to keep them safe in his pack just in case. But they don’t know enough about zombie physiology to make it a safe bet. Who knows if an overdose of opiates would do anything to stop reanimation… Hanging or blood loss have the same issue. From what they’ve seen, the only way to definitely kill a zomb’ is to destroy its brain. It’s not a huge leap to assume reanimation works the same way. It’ll be hard enough on Jack as it is, he won’t ask him to bash his skull in once he’s gone. He won’t do that to him.  
So jumping it is, it seems. He just needs to get somewhere high enough before it’s too late. And with the state of his foot, isn’t that going to be a stroll in the park… There was a tall grain silo half a mile back that might do the trick. He doesn’t sugarcoat it, he’s fucking scared. He never got jumpers, always seemed like a stupidly painful way to die. But the pain should be short and if he goes head first on a concrete floor, it should be reliable enough. He’ll make Jack leave beforehand if he can. He shouldn’t have to see that.

Eugene opens his eyes when a weight settles against his legs. Jack is still crouched in front of him but he has leant forward resting his head on Eugene’s knees, his hands closed around his ankle. He can’t see Jack’s face, but his shoulders are trembling ; they’re going up slowly as if he was inspiring too deeply, struggling to control his breathing. Eugene doesn’t want to think about it, about what will happen to Jack afterwards. If he did, he would need to take a long hard look at all the budding feelings he’s been bottling up those past few weeks. And damn it all if it wouldn’t make dying even harder.  
Jack whispers something but the words are lost in a noisy breath that could be a sob or a laugh ; it’s too hysterical for Eugene to be sure. He reaches for Jack’s face but there are still zombie’s hair and skin all over his fingers. He has to stop to flick it off and wipe them as best he can against the carpet. He reaches out again, this time for Jack’s upper arms.

“What did you say?”

Jack finally brings his head up to look at him. His face is a mess. His eyes are red. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, visible through the sweat and bloody spatter. He’s crying still. But there’s also a smile on his lips, a small smile so out of place in a mist of distraught emotions that Eugene doesn’t know how to react.

“I said ‘thank God’.” He replies. “Look, just look, Gene. You’re fine. Well not fine. I mean you’re not fine. It’s pretty gruesome actually and it’s gonna hurt like hell for a while, but… but you’re gonna be okay. Look.”

Jack’s hands are moving over Eugene’s ankle and foot as he babbles on, over and over again. It feels like a caress and when Eugene leans forward staring at his own limb. He only sees skin, swollen, bruised, blackened but intact skin.

“It didn’t break the skin. It’s bruised because it got crushed, but it didn’t break the skin.”

Jack grabs Eugene’s fingers and make them touch the contusion. There’s no wound, no dent in the skin, no scraped edges. While the shoe and sock didn’t protect him against the crushing force of the bite, they did a good job against the sharpness of it. It takes him a while to process, to fully understand what this means. Jack is sitting back on his heels and when Eugene looks up he’s wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Jack. It’s fine.” He finds himself saying before really processing the idea.  
“I know, I know. Sorry. I just… I thought I’d lost you there for a moment.”  
“You didn’t. You saved my ass.”  
“I think it was a team effort. Fuck. Bloody zomb’ had its teeth in you. Never been so fucking scared in my life.” Jack swears, wiping his eyes again. There’s anger in the gesture this time, not just grief.

And Eugene gets it. This is not just about him dying, this is about ending up alone. It’s about that story of theirs never reaching its potential. It’s about the careful dance they’ve executed since day one, the one that takes them one step closer to each other with each passing moment. It’s about a scream in the silence when the music suddenly cuts out and you realise you have no more counterpoint, that running for your life was never meant to be a seductive waltz. It’s about the still recognisable ruins of existence falling to dust at their feet until nothing is left but blood and hunger.

“Hey, look at me.” Eugene says softly, and he waits until Jack does. “It’s all right. You got to me in time.”  
“I know. Just… do that to me ever again and I swear to God I’ll kill you myself.”  
“Shh… I won’t. I’m fine. It’s going to be okay.”

He probably needs to hear it as much as Jack does. As he lets the relief trickles in, he doesn’t expect Jack to surge forward and wrap his arms around him, his forehead against Eugene’s shoulder. There’s nothing to do but return the embrace. And just like that, Eugene’s survival instincts kick in again. He’s going to fight this mess and he’s going to pull through. He wants to believe it. He won’t leave Jack alone. He clutches at the warm breathing body in his arms, ignoring how his own eyes fill with tears. What he said before wasn’t quite right.  
He passes a hand in Jack’s hair, tugging gently to raise his head. Jack yields and looks at him, opens his mouth to speak, but stops. Instead he passes a fingers under Eugene’s eyes looking at the tears there. There’s an odd expression on his face Eugene doesn’t know how to interpret. So he just goes ahead and says what he truly meant earlier.

“We’re going to be okay.”

Jack smiles in response, one of those blinding smiles he always manages to muster despite the starvation and the undead and the end of the world when Eugene says something worthwhile. And even though he doesn’t admit it, those are the smiles pushing Eugene forward when he wants to sit down and rock back and forth in a corner until it all ends. So he smiles back, and Jack’s eyes drop to his mouth. It’s barely a thought before Eugene sits up a little bit straighter to kiss him.  
Jack’s lips yield softly under his and he can still feel moisture on his cheek as he presses in. There’s no hesitation, no second guessing on Jack’s part, only fingers raising to hold Eugene’s jaw and a tongue licking at him through the kiss. It’s messy and desperate. Jack’s grip is nearly painful and Eugene knows he’s clinging too.  
This is no way to start a sane healthy relationship but he can’t bring himself to care anymore. Rules on sane and healthy have been thrown out of the window a while ago on a certain grey morning with gusts of moaning. This is what they’ve come to, a chaotic kiss with a music-obsessed ginger British smartass, barely half a metre from a rotting corpse, in the most goddam awful B&B he could have ever dreamt off.

Eugene wouldn’t change it for the world.

 

*

 

Jack pulls away a while later with an apologetic grin.

“It’s getting dark, we need to secure a room.”  
“Since when are you the voice of reason…”  
“Hush. Don’t ruin the moment. And I don’t care if you’d let me kiss you, I am not spending the night near that thing. It stinks.”

Eugene has to admit he has a point.

“Kitchen?”  
“Yeah. Kitchen.” Jack nods. “It’s got two exits and we know it’s clean. I’m not trying anymore bedrooms after this fiasco.”  
“Agreed.”  
“Hey, Gene?”  
“What?”  
“You’re still going to let me kiss you if we go to the kitchen, right? Because I was lying about not caring. I care. Kind of a lot.”

Oh, Eugene is going to enjoy that ginger complexion because no matter how straight Jack manages to keep his face, there’s no hiding that blush. He laughs as he replies.

“Find me dinner first.”  
“Dinner. I should be able to manage dinner. And then kissing?”  
“We’ll see, Dummy.”  
“Wow, kinky pet names already… That thing between us is moving so fast.”  
“Don’t make me regret it.”

It takes them a couple of minutes to get downstairs. Jack helps him up but Eugene goes most of the way using the walls for support leaving Jack free to swing W.G. should it become necessary. His ankle throbs but accepts to bear some of his weight as long as he walk with a frank limp. They thankfully reach the kitchen and their packs with no other encounters.  
There’s a good sturdy lock on the door giving onto the backyard, but they have to drag the fridge and a sideboard in front of the lounge door before Eugene feels safe enough to sit down against a wall.  
Jack goes through the cupboards in search of supplies. They don’t even try to open refrigerators anymore. By this point, the inside of fridges and freezers are like zombie apocalypse microcosms and they both get enough nightmares as it is without starting to dream about being swallowed by giant fungi.

“Ah, ah.”

Jack victoriously throws half a pack of rice on top of their kit, as well as a couple of tins of carrots and peas.

“I’ve got dinner.” He says with a grin, waving a can of sweetcorn and a nearly empty pack of digestive biscuits.  
“Wonderful.” Eugene tries for ironic, but the clenching of his stomach betrays his true feelings.  
“But first things first.”

They hate using their clean water for anything but drinking but they can’t very well eat or sleep while covered in zombie juices and running water is a thing of the past. As much as they try not to think about it, fighting the undead is a messy business and they know by now that if swallowing zombie saliva or blood was enough to get contaminated they would both have gone grey ages ago. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to risk staying in contact with potentially infectious material for longer than they have to . A graze, a nick in a nailbed are too easily missed.

Jack grabs a tea towel from the AGA, examines it and smells it. He dampens it before handing it over. Eugene scrubs at his face with a satisfied groan. Who knew wiping grim from your skin could feel so good? Say what you will about the Apocalypse, it has got a way of making one enjoy the little things.  
When Eugene sets the towel down, Jack is crouching in front of him, studying his injured foot. His eyes are averted with too much care to be a coincidence. If he had been a second faster, he’d have caught him staring. He doesn’t call Jack on it, just hands the towel back.

“Thanks.”

Jack sets it aside, his hand going to Eugene’s ankle again.

“I wish we’d have some ice. It sure looks like you could use some.”  
“It throbs but it moves well enough. I don’t think anything’s broken. It might be sprained, but we won’t know until the muscles cool off.”  
“Right.”

Jack finds them a pair of plates and forks, blows the dust of them and dumps half a tin of sweetcorn and a couple of digestive biscuits on each. He hands his to Eugene with a half bottle of water.  
As far as dinners go, it’s a pretty good one. Eugene is fairly certain by now that the first week on the road has murdered his internal foodie with no hope of revival. He’s just glad when he recognises what he has to swallow these days.  
The fork is raised half-way to his mouth when Jack’s hand on his arm stops him.

“What?”  
“You said I had to get you dinner.”

Eugene raises a quizzical eyebrow at that.

“Yeah. Thanks. I’d appreciate it even more if you’d let me eat it.”  
“Ah, but you didn’t mention any of that. I got you dinner, that was the deal.”  
“What?”

He’s at a loss for a second until Jack’s smile turns positively sultry.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
“Nope.”

They stare at each other, but Eugene already knows it’s a losing battle.

“You’re an idiot.”

Jack is positively beaming now, certain he has won. Eugene sets the plate aside and drags him in by the back of the neck, kissing that irritating smile off his face. He makes a thorough job of it, knowing that anything less will probably only serve to delay his meal further. Or so he justifies to himself while tilting Jack’s head to deepen the kiss.  
The growls of Jack’s stomach finally get loud enough to interrupt them and Eugene gives him a playful shove.

“There. Now go eat before you pass out.”

Jack does as he is told for once, polishing his serving in a few minutes without ever losing his grin.

It takes a while for him to set up the room for the night afterwards. Eugene tries to get up and help him once, but gives up when told to sit down and stay still in no uncertain terms. Instead, he busies himself by spreading his sleeping bag out for the night.

Jack hangs cups from the door handles and fill them with a few cutlery items. He empties a cupboard of pots and pans and lines the windowsills with them. Although zombie motor skills are rudimentary, a good number of them still seem to know how to open doors and recognise windows as weak structural points.  
Being on the move every day, they never have the time or material to fortify their shelter properly, but they also know that as much as they try to stand watch, their exhaustion often gets the better of them. They would need a bigger group of people to be able to have someone on guard at all times during the night and still make good ground during the day. They’ve had to come up with their own strategies to avoid being caught with their metaphorical pants down.

There’s barely any light filtering in from the outside by now and Jack’s a blurry shadow in the middle of the room when Eugene slides on his side, watching him, using his bent arm as a pillow. Jack hums under his breath as he repacks their supplies to accommodate the extra food he found earlier. Eugene doesn’t know the song but it’s soft and soothing, lulling him to sleep.

 

*

 

Eugene drifts back to consciousness in total darkness. He spends a couple of minutes listening before any coherent thoughts muddle their way through to the surface of his mind. The wind is loud, passing through the near-by foliage with high-pitched whistles turning to blood-curling screeches during the most violent bursts. He can’t hear the rain but the air is cold and smells of wet earth even inside the kitchen. There’s a banging noise in the distance and Eugene’s heart skips a couple of beats before he realises it’s too distant to be a threat. It’s probably just a barn door left unfastened.

He blinks several times, trying to adjust to the lack of light. He can eventually make out the edges of the windows against the black silver of the night sky but not the hand he brings up to rub his face. It’s probably a new moon or close to it.  
He sits up with a sigh, dragging the sleeping bag tighter around his body. He knows from experience that he won’t get back to sleep for another hour at least.  
The temperatures have been steadily dropping for a good fortnight now. It’s starting to be problematic at night. Their situation is difficult enough without adding to it chronic low grade hypothermia and all its potential consequences. They need to find a sport shop to raid soon to get some lightweight thermal clothing. Heavier waterproof coats wouldn’t go amiss either.

There’s a soft rustle to his left, his gaze drawn to it even though the darkness is still impenetrable. Jack is turning in his sleeping bag. Silence returns for a good twenty minutes. Eugene has closed his eyes again yielding to brewing exhaustion, yet unable to find sleep.  
He tries to shift his thought pattern, decides to draw on the dark plane of his eyelids the map of the constellations above Kananaskis Lake from memory. He used to go there camping every year with his parents.

“Gene? You’re awake?”

Jack’s voice is soft, careful.

“Apparently,” Eugene whispers back.  
“I thought you were. Wait.”

More rustling and the sounds of the sleeping bag zip being pulled down reach him this time, followed by the soft wisp of fabric being dragged over the wooden floor. Jack’s hand is tentative when it settles on his thigh, fingers walking up to the knee where Eugene is resting his forearm, climbing further to reach his shoulder and tugging at it.

“What are you…”  
“Shh… just let me. Scoot forward.”

Another tug gets Eugene to comply, giving Jack room to slide between him and the wall. Jack pulls his body back flush against his chest, covering them both with the sleeping bag draped around his shoulders.  
Eugene can feel Jack’s forehead against his hair, his lips just brushing his temple and the flush of warm air as he sighs. He can’t help but think how odd human relations are, how twenty-four hours ago he was so careful to not let Jack come too close, how now he just accepts his offer of physical comfort without as much as a second thought. He’s not blind. He has known for a while now that it would only take a hint for Jack to make a move. Eugene just wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do given the circumstances. He still doesn’t know but there’s no point worrying about it now. He won’t pretend he has the strength of character to go back to their awkward stand-off, not when Jack’s hands glide forward alongside his forearms and link their fingers together.  
Jack is silent for a couple of minutes. Then he shifts, burying his face in Eugene’s hair with a soft chuckle.

“For Heavens’ sake…”  
“What?”  
“Would you just relax?”

Eugene freezes. He’s been so lost in thoughts and ‘what ifs’, he hadn’t noticed how stiff he’s been holding himself. He takes a deep breath, holds it in and then lets it out, his whole body finally sinking against Jack’s. His head falls back against his shoulder.

“Sorry. I…”  
“Don’t know how to let go anymore?”  
“Something like that,” he admits with a bitter laugh.  
“I can help.”

There are lips at the corner of his mouth and Eugene turns his head asking for a real kiss. The angle doesn’t allow for much depth but it’s nice all the same, unhurried, more tender than hungry. Eugene swears in his mind. The Apocalypse is definitely messing with them. Nobody should kiss like that unless they’ve been dating for at least a couple of months. Yet, when Jack pulls away to catch his breath, he’s the one rising to get to his mouth again. He doesn’t want to think about it. Instead he coaxes Jack into a third, a fourth kiss, maybe more. He stops counting at some point.

Jack’s skull hits the wall with a thud when he pulls away a while later to avoid yawning in their kiss.

“Ow. Damn it.”  
“Careful.”  
“Not that it’s a hardship right now, but why are we even awake? I’m so damn tired.”  
“Biphasic sleep.”  
“I’m so sorry. Sounds painful. Is it contagious?”

The grunt Jack lets out when Eugene elbows him in the gut is very satisfying.

“If you must know, human beings naturally sleep in a biphasic pattern, usually in blocks of four hours of sleep with a one to two hours break in between. The Industrial Revolution screwed it over by spreading electric lights everywhere allowing people to stay up much later than they used to. They’ve done studies. If somebody gets deprived of artificial light they instinctively revert back to biphasic sleep. Hence us being awake.”  
“How do you even know that stuff?”  
“I read.”  
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny.”  
“I’m not joking. How many pieces of music do you know?”  
“What? What are you getting at?”  
“Answer the question, Jack.”  
“I dunno. I have fifteen thousand tracks on my iPod. Triple that on my computer. And I probably know double that number well enough.”  
“So about ninety thousands tracks.”  
“Give or take a couple of thousands.”  
“Right. Most people’s musical library contains between five and seven thousands songs. Even if we admit they know double that, that’s still a fair step away from what you do.”  
“Your point being?”  
“I read the way you listen to music, anything and everything I happen to get my hands on. Some of it is bound to stick.”  
“It would have been so handy if you had been one of those crazy people obsessed with the end of the world and how to survive it.”  
“Well, I do have a minor in psychology.”  
“Seriously? What for? Analysing people’s emotional response to unorthodox cooking methods?”  
“Amongst other things.”

Jack stays quiet for a whole minute, fingers tracing circles on the back of Eugene’s hand.

“Sorry. You have to admit it’s funny, put in that context.”  
“I didn’t really study journalism to write about food. I mean I always liked good food but it wasn’t the main project. It just came together that way.”  
“Tell me about it sometimes.”

Eugene makes a noncommittal sound in response. There are a lot of things they will need to tell each other, most of which are of little consequence at the moment. He has finally started to warm up thanks to the added sleeping bag and Jack’s body heat. He leans back further. The darkness in the room is perfectly still despite the wailing squalls outside. The physical boundaries between their bodies have become nebulous and meaningless.

 

*

 

When Eugene opens his eyes again, the white light of dawn is pouring into the kitchen. Jack’s head is heavy against his and he is snoring loudly right into his ear. He can’t bring himself to care. As far as mornings go, it’s probably the best he had since the world went pear-shaped.

Which is of course why it only lasts for another ten minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
